OpenAI's new AI model pushed emerging market stocks to a two-month high

Emerging-market stocks started the week on an upswing: optimism surrounding OpenAI’s new artificial intelligence model boosted the share prices of major technology companies and offset the negative impact of rising oil prices, according to Bloomberg.

The MSCI Emerging Markets Index rose 1.7% on September 7, reaching its highest level since June 26. The MSCI Emerging Markets Currency Index gained 0.2% during trading on September 7, marking its 13th gain in the last 14 sessions. South Korea’s Kospi index jumped 4.6% on Monday. This rally was driven by a renewed surge in technology stocks, according to Bloomberg. Shares of South Korean memory chip makers Samsung and SK Hynix jumped 5.7% and 8.3%, respectively, mirroring Friday’s performance by U.S. chipmakers (On September 4, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose by more than 3%; U.S. stock markets are closed on Monday for Labor Day).

Bloomberg notes that the main driver for the IT industry was OpenAI's announcement of the release of the next-generation GPT-6 Astra neural network, which the company calls an important step toward creating artificial general intelligence (AGI).

At the same time, most other sectors of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index fell, the agency notes. Pressure on these sectors came, among other things, from rising oil prices in the Middle East following the exchange of strikes between the U.S. and Iran, as well as strong U.S. labor market data for August released on Friday, which reinforced expectations that the Fed may resume raising interest rates.

The rise in oil prices failed to offset the positive sentiment in the IT sector, noted BNY’s senior Asia-Pacific strategist, Vi Khun Chong: “A strong rally in the tech sector on Friday boosted sentiment on Asian markets, led by the KOSPI, Taiwanese stocks, and the Nikkei,” he noted (Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 2.1% on September 7).

Against this backdrop, investors seeking to diversify their portfolios beyond the overheated AI assets in South Korea and Japan are turning to derivatives on Chinese stocks. The trading divisions of Barclays and UBS Group are seeing a surge in demand for call options (which bet on an asset’s rise) and swap contracts linked to China’s CSI indices, Bloomberg reports. Mainland China’s CSI 300 index rose 0.6% on September 7. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 0.9%.

Astra became available to business users on September 3, and its release to the general public is planned for the coming days, the company said last Thursday. According to the Financial Times, OpenAI’s new AI model is already being called “the smartest in the world,” and the company claims it outperforms even the most advanced neural networks from OpenAI’s main competitor — Anthropic—including in the fields of software development, science, and cybersecurity.

"Astra represents a generational leap in capabilities," OpenAI President Greg Brockman also told reporters last week—a model that, according to him, can already be considered general artificial intelligence (AGI—the term used to describe the stage of neural network development at which AI surpasses humans in a wide range of cognitive tasks).

It is expected that using Astra will cost about the same as using Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.1.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor